At The New Republic’s Soapbox, TNR Editor Michael Tomasky interviews Navin Nayak, president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Here’s a cross-post of Tomasky’s introduction, followed by the video of the interview:

It’s one of the most frequent and familiar complaints of rank-and-file liberals: Democratic messaging, especially on the economy, stinks. A new poll from NBC News will surely only add fuel to the fire, as it shows the Republicans with the largest lead on the question of which party can better handle the economy since 1991—at 49 percent to 28 percent. Everybody has ideas and suspicions about why Democrats struggle to break through. Navin Nayak, the president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has studied the question intensely with his staff. And the situation is … not good.

Nayak has put together a PowerPoint presentation that is a hot commodity in progressive Washington. He’s been showing it to groups of insiders and elected officials, and here, in this edition of Tomaskycast,you’ll get to see some of the slides yourself. Nayak and his team looked at every press release, Facebook post, and tweet put out in 2022 by Democratic candidates for federal office—some 570,000 pieces of communication. And they found that, “to our surprise, only 5 percent mentioned the words ‘economy’ or ‘economics.’” Even including words like “workers,” “wages,” and “jobs” only raised the number to 11 percent. Small wonder the Republicans come out ahead in those polls.

There’s a feast of useful information in this interview for anyone who really wants to understand the details on the hole in which Democrats find themselves. The news isn’t all bad: By 68 percent to 32 percent, people say they do support the core Joe Biden message of investing in the middle class over the Republican message of investing in businesses and letting them spread the bounty. But as Nayak says, among Democrats there is “a real recognition that there isn’t message clarity, and there isn’t a simple thing that Democrats from across the country and from top to bottom repeat.”

Some excerpts from “For Biden, Republican Anti-Government Attacks Can Be a Campaign Strategy: While Trump believes the government exists to serve him, Biden has a strong case for a government for the people in 2024” by Chris Edelson at The Progressive:

Ironically, one of the most fervent Trump supporters—Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia—may have given Biden a ready-made campaign plank. In July, Greene warned that Biden is following in the footsteps of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson; that he is a “Democratic Socialist” committed to “big government programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare.”

Greene—known for promoting a “Jewish space laser” conspiracy by breathlessly (and incoherently) suggesting that California wildfires in 2018 might have had something to do with a “laser beam” somehow connected to “Rothschild, Inc”—doesn’t stand out as a deep, strategic thinker. So it’s no surprise that her effort to tar Biden with the frequently misused scare label of “socialist” could easily backfire. As one observer said of Greene’s “socialism” rant, “it strikes me as a curious political strategy to compare the legislation of a President [Biden] you despise and want to impeach with some of the most broadly popular legislation in American history.”

Biden seems to agree with this analysis: his campaign quickly responded with an ad that welcomed Greene’s comparison to FDR and LBJ as an indication that the Biden Administration is committed to helping middle class and working class people.

It was refreshing—but certainly not inevitable—to see Biden proudly embrace the idea that government can be a force for good in Americans’ lives.  In the past, other Democrats went into a defensive crouch when Republicans like Ronald Reagan described government as “the problem.” After Republicans hammered home their “big government attack” for more than a decade, Bill Clinton finally conceded in 1996 that “the era of big government is over,” seeming to accept the Republicans’ premise that government is the enemy, or, at best, “a necessary evil.”

Edelson adds, “The Biden ad suggests an alternative approach: seizing on overwrought Republican anti-government rhetoric as an opening for presenting an effective case for Biden and the Democrats in 2024 that contrasts their approach with Republicans’ cynical view of government….” Further, writes Edelson,

….Republicans see government as a force that serves them—that advances their specific world views at the expense of their perceived enemies. This view is represented in its purest form by the party’s leader, Donald Trump. For Trump, everything is about him, and the government exists only to serve his personal interests by lining his pockets (or his family members’ pockets), protecting his henchmen, punishing his perceived enemies, and consolidating personal power. This is a man so self-absorbed that he falsely insisted classified government documents were “my documents.”….If he is given a second term, Trump has made it brazenly clear that he will do all he can to make government officials personally loyal to him. At its heart, Trump’s vision of government is profoundly authoritarian: he sees government as a tool he can use to advance his interests and a weapon he can deploy to destroy his critics.

In contrast, Biden and the Democrats can argue that government exists to serve everyone. The point of government is to make life better—the preamble to our Constitution says as much. Where Trump’s view of government is deeply authoritarian and personal, Biden can embrace government as thoroughly democratic and aimed at public service. He could claim his presidency has been focused not on personal gain but rather on helping Americans burdened by student loans, inflation, worries about the pandemic, and economic uncertainty. On all of these fronts, Biden has standing to contend that peoples’ lives have been improved by government intervention, and that he can continue this approach in a second term.

Edelson concludes that “emphasizing a contrast between Biden’s and Trump’s approaches to government can give progressives an edge in an election that may be extremely competitive.” These opposing views of government provide an important distinction.

But it’s not just that Democrats have a genuine faith in government’s responsibility to serve the people, while Trump and his Republican lapdogs see government as a tool for their personal enrichment. Democrats should also not hesitate to ‘wave the flag’ and say clearly that Trump’s view of government, shared by his followers in his party, is deeply unamerican and unpatriotic. They have betrayed America’s — and Democracy’s — best ideals about freedom and fairness. That’s what voters who love America should take to the polls in 2024.

At floridapolitics.com, A. G. Gancarski reports that “DeSantis Under 30% Approval With Women,” and writes, “As the First Lady launches “Mamas for DeSantis,” new polling suggests the Governor’s got trouble with women nationally….A survey conducted by The Economist and YouGov shows fewer than 3 in 10 women nationally approve of Ron DeSantis, a sign he may face difficulties with the opposite sex if he should be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024….In a survey of 1,500 adult citizens, just 29% of women regard the Governor favorably. “Very favorable” respondents make up 10% of the sample, while “somewhat favorable” makes up another 19%….Meanwhile, 45% of women regard the Governor unfavorably, with a total of 37% of the sample regarding him in a “very unfavorable manner.”….he Governor has 35% approval against 43% disapproval overall, with 42% approval among men against 48% disapproval with that gender.” Further, “Just 27% of independent voters approve of DeSantis, against 49% disapproval. Among moderates, 29% approve of DeSantis, against 41% disapproval….DeSantis’ problems with female voters may drive a lot of this negativity; the crosstabs do not break it down to that degree. Consistent with that read, other polling shows the Governor struggling with women….A June Civiqs survey reveals that 63% of women disapprove of the Florida Governor, with 60% of female independent voters and 93% of Democratic women against him….A June poll by The Economist and YouGov, also illustrates DeSantis is dragging with women voters, and is stronger with men.” This is the Republican who is 2nd only to Trump among GOP presidential contenders. No matter who the GOP nominates, they are in trouble with women voters.

Steve Benen has a juicy contribution to the GOP’s ever-increasing annals of hypocrisy at MSNBC’s ‘MaddowBlog, where he writes  “In 2009 and 2010, Republicans who opposed the Democrats’ Recovery Act started showing up at ribbon-cutting ceremonies, as if they deserved some credit for the economic package then-President Barack Obama used to help end the Great Recession. At one point, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put together a list of the House Republicans who tried to take credit for the investments, and the list included more than 70% of the House GOP conference….The phenomenon was so common, Democrats came up with a label for Republicans who condemned the Recovery Act, except when it helped their constituents: “Highway Hypocrites.”….to fully appreciate the scope of the GOP hypocrisy, look no further than the party’s approach to infrastructure investments that wouldn’t exist if Republicans had their way. AL.com had a reportyesterday, for example, with a succinct headline: “Tuberville praises $1.4 billion for broadband he voted against.”….The Alabaman has plenty of company. Some GOP members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation this week also celebrated broadband investments from the Biden administration, which they voted against. Republican Sen. John Cornyn yesterday touted federal funds to boost broadband expansion efforts in his home state of Texas, while neglecting to mention that those funds only exist thanks to legislation that he voted to kill…..Tuberville, for example, argued in his online missive yesterday, “Broadband is vital for the success of our rural communities and for our entire economy. [It’s] great to see Alabama receive crucial funds to boost ongoing broadband efforts.”….And therein lies the problem: If broadband is vital, and these funds are “crucial,” why did Tuberville vote against the investments?….I’ve lost count of how manycongressional Republicans have touted, celebrated, taken credit for, or some combination thereof infrastructure investments that they voted against — and in several instances, condemned as “socialism.”

“Among the additional conditions working to the advantage of Democrats are the increase in Democratic Party loyalty and ideological consistency, ” Thomas B. Edsall writes in his New York Times column. “the political mobilization of liberal constituencies by adverse Supreme Court rulings, an initial edge in the fight for an Electoral College majority and the increase in nonreligious voters along with a decline in churchgoing believers….These and other factors have prompted two Democratic strategists, Celinda Lake and Mike Lux, to declare, “All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024.” In “Democrats Could Win a Trifecta in 2024,” a May 9 memo released to the public, the two even voiced optimism over the biggest hurdle facing Democrats, retaining control of the Senate in 2024, when as many as eight Democratic-held seats are competitive while the Republican seats are in solidly red states:

While these challenges are real, they can be overcome, and the problems are overstated. Remember that this same tough Senate map produced a net of five Democratic pickups in the 2000 election, which Gore narrowly lost to Bush; six Democratic pickups in 2006, allowing Democrats to retake the Senate; and two more in 2012. If we have a good election year overall, we have a very good chance at Democrats holding the Senate.

….Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, documents growing Democratic unity in two 2023 papers, “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats Are Moving Left” and “The Transformation of the American Electorate….As a result of these trends toward intraparty consensus, there has been a steady drop in the percentage of Democratic defections to the opposition, as the party’s voters have become less vulnerable to wedge-issue tactics, especially wedge issues closely tied to race….From 2012 to 2020, Abramowitz wrote in the “Transformation” paper, “there was a dramatic increase in liberalism among Democratic voters.” As a result of these shifts, he continued, “Democratic voters are now as consistent in their liberalism as Republican voters are in their conservatism.”….Most important, Abramowitz wrote, the

rise in ideological congruence among Democratic voters — and especially among white Democratic voters — has had important consequences for voting behavior. For many years, white Democrats have lagged behind nonwhite Democrats in loyalty to Democratic presidential candidates. In 2020, however, this gap almost disappeared, with white Democratic identifiers almost as loyal as nonwhite Democratic identifiers.

Edsall continues, “Three Supreme Court decisions handed down in the last week of June — rejecting the Biden administration’s program to forgive student loan debt, affirming the right of a web designer to refuse to construct wedding websites for same-sex couples and ruling unconstitutional the use of race by colleges in student admissions — are, in turn, quite likely to increase Democratic turnout more than Republican turnout on Election Day….Politically, one of the most effective tools for mobilizing voters is to emphasize lost rights and resources….This was the case after last June’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the right to abortion and in the 2022 midterm elections mobilized millions of pro-abortion-rights voters. By that logic, the three decisions I mentioned should raise turnout among students, L.G.B.T.Q. people and African Americans, all largely Democratic constituencies….Kyle D. Kondik, the managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ballat the University of Virginia Center for Politics, published “Electoral College Ratings: Expect Another Highly Competitive Election” last week….“We are starting 260 electoral votes’ worth of states as at least leaning Democratic,” Kondik wrote, “and 235 as at least leaning Republican,” with “just 43 tossup electoral votes at the outset.”…In other words, if this prediction holds true until November 2024, the Democratic candidate would need 10 more Electoral College votes to win and the Republican nominee would need 35….The competitive states, Kondik continues, “are Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16) and Wisconsin (10) — the three closest states in 2020 — along with Nevada (6), which has voted Democratic in each of the last four presidential elections but by closer margins each time.”….Among the key voters who, in all likelihood, will pick the next president — relatively well-educated suburbanites — Trump has become toxic. He is, at least in that sense, Biden’s best hope for winning a second term.”

If you are feeling a sense of deja vu about where the current budget debate in Congress is headed, you aren’t alone, and I offered an explanation at New York:

In the partisan messaging battle over the federal budget, Joe Biden seems to have Republicans right where he wants them. Beginning with his State of the Union Address in early February, the president has hammered away at GOP lawmakers for plotting to gut wildly popular Social Security and Medicare benefits. This has driven Republicans into a defensive crouch; they can either pretend their proposed cuts aren’t really cuts or forswear them altogether. It’s a message that Democrats would love to highlight every day until the next election, or at least until Republicans figure out a better response than lies, evasions, and blustery denials.

But as Ron Brownstein points out in The Atlantic, there is a logical path Republicans could take to counter Democrats’ claims that GOP policies threaten popular retirement programs. It’s based on pitting every other form of federal domestic spending against Social Security and Medicare, and on making Democratic support for Big Government and its beneficiaries a political problem among seniors:

“Republicans hope that exempting Social Security and Medicare [from cutbacks they are demanding for raising the federal debt limit] will dampen any backlash to their deficit-reduction plans in economically vulnerable districts. But protecting those programs, as well as defense, from cuts—while also precluding tax increases—will force the House Republicans to propose severe reductions in other domestic programs … potentially including Medicaid, the ACA, and food and housing assistance.

“Will a Republican push for severe reductions in those programs provide Democrats with an opening in such places? Robert J. Blendon, a professor emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health, is dubious. Although these areas have extensive needs, he told me, the residents voting Republican in them are generally skeptical of social-welfare spending apart from Social Security and Medicare. ‘We are dealing with a set of values here, which has a distrust of government and a sense that anyone should have to work to get any sort of low-income benefit,’ Blendon said. ‘The people voting Republican in those districts don’t see it as important [that] government provides those benefits.’”

And so Republicans will very likely return to the messaging they embraced during the Obama administration. Back then, self-identified Tea Party conservatives constantly tried to convince elderly voters that the real threat to their retirement programs stemmed not from GOP budget cutting, but from Democratic-backed Big Government spending on younger people and minorities, with whom many conservative voters did not identify. Then as now, a partisan budget fight — and the threat of a debt default of government shutdown — let Republicans frame funding decisions as a competition between groups of beneficiaries, rather than a debate over abstract levels of taxing or spending.

The big opening shot in the anti-Obama campaign was Sarah Palin’s wildly mendacious but highly effective September 2009 Facebook post claiming that the Affordable Care Act would create “death panels” that would eliminate Medicare coverage for seniors or disabled children deemed socially superfluous (the barely legitimate basis for the attack was an Affordable Care Act provision to allow Medicare payments to physicians discussing end-of-life treatments with patients).

Soon Republicans would come up with slightly more substantive claims that Obamacare threatened Medicare. In 2011, House GOP budget maven Paul Ryan, whom Democrats hammered for his proposals to partially privatize both Social Security and Medicare, claimed that Obama administration projections of health cost savings in Medicare represented a shift of resources from Medicare to Obamacare. By 2012, when Ryan became Mitt Romney’s running mate, Ryan was campaigning with his mother in tow, claiming that Republicans wanted to protect her from raids on her retirement benefits by the redistributionist Democrats.

Romney and Ryan didn’t win, of course, but they did win the over-65 vote by a robust 56-44 margin, a better performance in that demographic than Trump registered in 2016 or 2020. As Thomas Edsall explained in The New Republic in 2010, the Tea Party–era Republicans understood they had to mobilize their federal spending constituents against alleged competitors:

“Republicans understand that one axis of the resource war will be generational. All of their vows to defend Medicare are coupled with attacks on Obama’s health care reform. They implicitly portray Democrats as waging an age war—creating a massive new government program that transfers dollars to the young at the expense of the elderly. Republicans have cleverly stoked the fear that Obama is rewarding all his exuberant, youthful, idealistic supporters by redistributing resources that are badly needed by the old.”

In a 2024 campaign in which Democrats are going for the jugular with seniors, a reprise of the GOP’s 2012 Medicare counterattack, dishonest as it was, might make sense.

During this year’s budget skirmish in Congress, House Republicans are expected to take a claw hammer to domestic spending outside Social Security and Medicare, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reports:

“This spring, House Republicans are expected to release an annual budget resolution that calls for large health care cuts, and Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) marketplace coverage are likely to be prime targets. House Republican leaders are calling for cutting the deficit and making the Trump tax cuts permanent, while saying they will shield certain areas of the budget (Medicare, Social Security, and military spending) from cuts. To do all these things at once, it is highly likely they will propose cuts in health programs that provide coverage to millions of people.”

The House GOP has also already called for deep cuts in nondefense discretionary spending, including food stamp and nutrition programs. It’s likely the GOP’s state-based crusade against “woke” public education will lead to a renewal of ancient conservative demands to deeply cut or kill the U.S. Department of Education. Maybe those representing energy-producing areas will go hard after EPA or the Department of the Interior’s programs. Almost certainly, the GOP as a whole will embrace across-the-board cuts in federal employment or federal employee benefits under the guise of “draining the swamp.” Any and all such cuts can also be rationalized as necessary to avoid reductions in spending for Social Security, Medicare, and national defense, not to mention tax increases.

Whatever formula they adopt, there’s little doubt Republicans will find ways to present themselves the true defenders of Social Security and Medicare, just as many of them will always keep scheming for ways to damage or destroy these vestiges of the New Deal and Great Society. Biden seems committed to his effort to make seniors fear the GOP, and this is the only way Republicans can counter-punch.

At Vox, Nicole Narea gathers comments from four political strategists/pollsters in response to a question of current speculation: “Would Trump’s indictment help or hurt his 2024 campaign?” Some excerpts: GOP pollster Whit Ayers – “I am skeptical that a charge about a years-old event that everybody has already known about for years is likely to have much impact on anything, other than it will probably rally Republicans and supporters of Trump around him, at least in the short term. This would be a very easy case to frame as a partisan political indictment. Much easier to frame that way than, say, the Georgia voting case or the classified documents or January 6.” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg – “I think it will help [Trump] in the Republican primary, but will continue to degrade him with the broader electorate. MAGA has underperformed in three consecutive elections, and we know it doesn’t work in the battlegrounds. And if the Republicans present themselves as the party all for MAGA in 2024, they’re gonna have a very, very hard time winning the presidency….Trump coming in as the nominee, having been indicted potentially two or three times — there’s no scenario where that’s helpful to him in a national election. It perhaps will help him crowd out DeSantis and other challengers in the primary. But of course, that would be a disaster for the Republican Party. I’d much rather be us than them heading into this next election.” Matt Dole, Ohio Republican strategist: “Trump faced an uphill battle before this for the nomination. I think [his indictment] probably just adds to that. A lot of folks in the Republican coalition want an option that espouses [Trump’s] policies without bringing the antics. Ron DeSantis, obviously, is the model for that….Over the long term, I think this probably helps Trump’s opponents in the Republican primary. There’s certainly a lot to be said for political attacks on President Trump. But I think throughout the entire Republican coalition, this probably hurts him more than it would help….There is a subset of Republicans who are going to support Donald Trump to the very end. And they are loud. And they are well-covered by the media. There will certainly be blowback. But again, all of this is feeding into the fatigue about Donald Trump.”

Pranab Bardhan shares some perceptive insights in “What Will It Take to Save Democracy?,” his review of Martin Wolf’s The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism at The Boston Review. Bardhan, author of  “A World of Insecurity: Democratic Disenchantment in Rich and Poor Countries,” notes that “the cultural narratives used by the right have been more effective in influencing public opinion than the economic narratives of class politics used by left-liberals. Survey results have shown that people tend to vastly overestimatethe size of immigrant and minority populations but dramatically underestimate the extent of wealth inequality and the racial wealth gap. The narrative of a besieged cultural majority and the spell of white nationalist conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement are difficult to break, fueling a victimization complex and toxic cultural forms of status anxiety. The whole situation is exacerbated by social media, where the right seems to have an advantage in spreading falsehoods; the more outrageous they are, the more viral they are likely to go (and the more profits the social media companies make). There is evidence that in the three months before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, false stories on Facebook favoring Trump were shared about 30 million times, whereas false stories favoring Hillary Clinton were shared about 8 million times….The decline of unions has hollowed out a shared sense of meaning and identity among workers. Into this cultural void the demagogues have stepped with their racist, xenophobic culture war agenda. In a world of virulent disinformation and fake news and with social media amplifying anger and resentments and creating echo chambers of extremism, labor unions—in collaboration with other community organizations—can try to be active in providing links to public information services and news provided by demonstrably independent agencies.”

“Biden kicks off ‘Invest in America’ tour next week,” Jeremy Diamond reports at CNN Politics: “As he gears up for a likely reelection campaign, President Joe Biden on Tuesday will kick off a three-week tour to highlight the impact of his signature legislative accomplishments as the impacts of those laws begin to be felt around the country, according to a White House official….The “Invest in America” tour will see Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden and nearly a dozen Cabinet members hit more than 20 states – including key battleground states like Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania – over the next three weeks….The tour is the White House’s most coordinated, concerted push to date to accomplish what White House officials see as their central task this year: implementing legislation and making sure Americans know what Biden has accomplished. Polling published last month indicated the White House has its work cut out: 62% of Americans said they believe Biden has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing,” according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll….Biden will make his first of multiple stops on Tuesday with a visit to a semiconductor manufacturer in Durham, North Carolina, which has announced plans to build a $5 billion chips manufacturing facility that will create 1,800 new jobs, spurred on by passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, which incentivizes domestic semiconductor manufacturing….Biden will head to North Carolina a day after convening a meeting of his “Invest in America” Cabinet, which is comprised of key Cabinet officials working to implement the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan….Biden and his Cabinet will highlight the direct and indirect impacts of those laws – including private sector investments spurred on by pieces of legislation – and the impact on state and local economies at each stop.” Sounds like a good plan. But I hope these Democrats will also share some soundbites showing that Republicans are more committed to supporting investments in other countries.

Sherrilyn Ifill reports at slate.com on “The Republican Plan to Make Voting Irrelevant,” and writes, “The ability of the governor to appoint a nominee to fill the unexpired term of a senator without restrictions is the law in 35 states….This effort—to remove powers from elected representatives who are Democrats—has become the new method of disenfranchising voters and maintaining perpetual Republican political power. And it is being undertaken with alarming frequency and speed across the country,” Ifill warns. Further, “This may be the most dangerous and efficient structural attack on our democracy. Its threat, and pernicious ingenuity, lies in its ability to make voting itself irrelevant. Voters may turn out in high numbers and elect their candidates of choice, but if the official is not one whose views align with those of the Republican Party, they may find that their powers of office are removed by antagonistic GOP-controlled legislatures.” Ifill notes “Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, not widely regarded as a reform prosecutor, made the presumably unpardonable decision to convene a grand jury to investigate the effort of Donald Trump to compel Georgia officials to fraudulently award him votes he did not win in the 2020 election. In the wake of what were reported to be “imminent” indictments resulting from Willis’ investigations, the Georgia Legislature passed a legally dubious bill that would create commissions empowered to remove elected prosecutors from office….It was [Sen. Mitch] McConnell who, in essence, removed the power of a sitting president to fill an open seat on the United States Supreme Court when he refused to allow hearings and consideration of President Obama’s nominee, then-Judge Merrick Garland. In essence, the Republicans declared that a Democratic president would be denied the constitutional power to appoint justices to the Supreme Court as long as the GOP controlled the Senate….This is an efficiently sinister effort to solidify one-party rule. Its geographic breadth and reach to offices both high and low requires a national legislative response….this should be powerful motivation for congressional Democrats—and, indeed, for all Americans who wish to live in a democracy—to turn out and vote this year and next, in essence to save the framework of democracy while there’s still time. It should be clear now that for the foreseeable future, democracy remains on the ballot.”

From Mike Lux’s  Executive Summary of  “A Strategy for Factory Towns,” a report by American Family Values:

Hard times, effective right-wing messaging, the demise of local news, and sometimes the Democratic Party itself have led to big changes in the voting and opinions of people living in small and midsized towns that have been most impacted by deindustrialization and increased Big Business power in the economy. But these Factory Towns voters are not lost causes to the Democratic Party, and we cannot afford to write them off. They comprise 48% of the voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, and if we continue to lose ground with them, the entire region will become more and more like Iowa and Missouri – tough states for the foreseeable future. However, if these counties start to move back toward the Democrats, that kind of progress could be the linchpin to building sustained Democratic majorities that can usher our country into a more progressive future.

This report is part of a continuing effort by American Family Voices to do on-the-ground research and data analysis to understand the thinking and motivation of working-class voters, and to recommend strategies that can begin to rebuild the Democratic Party’s and progressive movement’s historic connection to America’s working class.

The project focuses on voters in “Factory Town” counties in six key states: Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. These states were Ground Zero in 2016, breaking down the “Blue Wall” critical to Democratic victories. Joe Biden did just enough better in 2020 to help win back Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but these communities in all six states remain very tough for Democrats and will be among the most highly competitive counties for 2024.

Despite the challenges, this is a moment where Democrats have an opportunity to make more gains. Biden and the Democratic Congress have passed substantial legislation that can bring progressive change, all the way down to the community level, over the next two years. The president’s policies, background, and genuine affinity for these working-class communities make him an ideal leader for this effort.

This report combines data from our most recent polling, Facebook and digital analytics, and comparisons of county-by-county elections results in 2022 to the past decade of state election results. The report closes with recommendations on how Democrats and progressive issue advocates should move forward with Factory Towns voters and counties.

Here is the bottom line in our findings:

1. The presidential horse race numbers are very competitive in these counties, but Republicans are stronger in terms of the economic frame.

2. Voters have negative opinions of both parties: this presents both challenges and opportunities for Democrats. Voters in these counties tend to think Democrats lack an economic plan, but they see the GOP as the party of wealthy corporations and CEOs.

3. Populist economics and the Democratic economic policy agenda play very well in these counties. These voters respond best to an agenda focused on kitchen-table economic issues.

4. Contrary to conventional wisdom, populist economic messaging works much better than cultural war messaging. Our strongest Democratic message on the economy beats the Republican culture war message easily. The Republican economic message is a bigger threat to us.

5. Community building needs to be at the heart of our organizing strategy.

6. I recommend that Democrats and progressives make major investments in local field organizing and door-to-door, special events that build community, online community building, existing local media and progressive media targeted to these counties, and progressive organizations that make sure voters know how to benefit directly from the Biden policy initiatives of the last two years.

Read The Poll.

At The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner shares some ideas about “Turning the Debt Ceiling Crisis Against McCarthy’s Republicans: Biden needs to play serious hardball, or he will get rolled.” As Kuttner writes, “Biden could announce that he is not going to play the Republicans’ game and relitigate spending that has already been approved by Congress. The Republicans would contend that this breaching of the legislated debt ceiling is illegal, and appeal it to the high court….Over to you, Court originalists. Does the Court want to be responsible for ordering a default on the U.S. Treasury bonds that anchor the world’s financial markets?…The other way for Biden to play the kind of hardball that the situation demands is to emulate Bill Clinton’s successful evisceration of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995. Gingrich was the first Republican leader to play games with shutting down the government….When Clinton refused to agree to budget cuts demanded by Gingrich in November 1995, the Speaker threatened not to authorize an increase in the public debt, and forced a shutdown of the government that lasted five days. A second shutdown, beginning December 16, lasted 21 days….But polls suggested that the public blamed the Republicans. It was Gingrich who blinked first, and the episode was the beginning of the end of his Speakership….The lesson for today: By refusing to play, Biden would signal that if Kevin McCarthy wants to tank the world economy by allowing the U.S. to default on Treasury bonds, that’s on him….McCarthy, given his deal with the far-right Freedom Caucus, would not blink first. But the 20 or so moderate Republicans, who were willing to vote for McCarthy as Speaker and accept his rules package, might well decide that enough is enough. Peeling off a few Republicans to vote for an increase in the debt ceiling without crippling cuts would have the further virtue of moving the House closer to a de facto House governing coalition of Democrats and sane Republicans….Both versions of this strategy have risks. But allowing McCarthy to call the tune, forcing disabling budget cuts and humiliating Biden’s presidency, has even greater risks.”

In a Facebook post, Drew Westen, author of “The Political Brain” and founder of Westen Strategies LLC and co-founder of Implicit Strategies, says what he really thinks about Attorney General Merrick Garland’s law enforcement regarding the January 6th coup attempt/riot in the U.S. capitol. An excerpt: “His behavior is never explicable in terms of political or legal reasoning, although he couches it that way and believes his own rationalizations….I wrote about this personality style and why it can be so dangerous in Democratic politics 15 years ago in The Political Brain, years before Garland began obsessively collecting affidavits as the seditionists collected AR 15s….Appeasement in the face of real threat is psychologically motivated complicity, driven by cowardice, whether conscious or unconscious. Appeasement only emboldens a bully or a psychopath, who understands it to be a sign of fear, not virtue. Somehow, two new democracies, Peru and Brazil, knew what to do in the face of sedition. They rounded up the seditionists, including those in high places, and put them where they were no longer dangerous, in prison. In so doing, they not only followed the law but shaped public opinion and frightened co-conspirators and would-be accomplices after the fact, so that the vast majority of Brazilians today, for example, believe one narrative, the truth, that the attack on their institutions was an attack on their democracy that cannot be tolerated. Like other obsessional personalities, Garland is a concrete thinker, who cannot understand meta-messages, particularly meta-messages that send emotional signals. He does not understand how light or no sentences for seditionists after waiting months or years to act sent the signal that sedition was not a serious crime, and that allowing them to create an alternative narrative for two years was not only going to split the country in two but would put the seditionists in charge of a House of Congress that would then investigate the DOJ’s investigation of them. Had he been appointed to the Supreme Court, he would no doubt have been the swing vote with the conservatives half the time out of a false sense of “fairness.” Fairness to fascism is no virtue. #NoBallsNoBrains.”

In “Biden world giddy at MTG, Gosar, and Boebert being placed on Oversight” at Politico, Christopher Cadelago, Jordain Carney, Nicholas Wu and Jonathan Lemire write: “House Republicans’ installation of some of their most incendiary conservatives on the Oversight Committee is sparking an unexpected feeling inside the White House: unbridled glee….The panel tasked with probing Biden policies and actions, as well as the president’s own family, will be stocked with some of the chamber’s biggest firebrands and die-hard Trumpists — including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) — ideal figureheads for a White House eager to deride the opposition party as unhinged….No administration wants to feel the heat of congressional investigations, and Biden’s team is no different. But privately, the president’s aides sent texts to one another with digital high fives and likened their apparent luck to drawing an inside straight. One White House ally called it a “political gift.”….The jubilation was tempered, somewhat, by Democrats on the Hill who expressed more apprehension about the posting….“The English language runs out of adjectives to describe the debasement, cynical debasement of the whole process these appointments represent,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a senior Oversight panel member, said in an interview. “And it is, I think, a huge black mark on Kevin McCarthy….“[W]ith these members joining the Oversight Committee,” White House oversight spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement, “it appears that House Republicans may be setting the stage for divorced-from-reality political stunts, instead of engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people.” I think the high-fivers are right. Degrading the Oversight Committee that much is an unexpected gift to Dems, who will surely make the most of it.

So how are Americans feeling about U.S. military support of The Ukraine? Cooper Burton and Zoha Qamar explore public opinion on the topic at FiveThirthyEight, and write: “December polling from Morning Consult found that only 41 percent of voters were “very concerned” about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, down from 58 percent who said the same in March of last year. The same poll showed a decline in the share of voters who felt that the U.S. has a responsibility to protect Ukraine from Russia, from 47 percent in March to 40 percent in December. …Americans are still largely supportive of some sort of aid to Ukraine, though. In a preelection November poll from TIPP Insights, 68 percent of registered voters said it’s important for the new Congress to direct assistance to Ukraine. And in a YouGov/CBS News poll released earlier this week, 64 percent of adults said they preferred their representatives to support U.S. aid to Ukraine rather than oppose it….A Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. poll conducted in December for Fox News showed that 40 percent of registered voters felt the U.S. was doing “about the right amount” to help Ukraine. An additional 26 percent thought it should be doing less; only 29 percent felt the U.S. should be doing more. The Morning Consult poll showed similar numbers, but it also showed that support for aiding Ukraine has slipped since the spring: In March, only 12 percent of registered voters felt the U.S. was doing too much to halt the invasion, but that number had risen to 24 percent in December….The cooler support for more aid may be due to a growing partisan divide on the issue. In the YouGov/CBS News poll, a narrow majority of Republicans (52 percent) wanted their representative in Congress to oppose aid, whereas 81 percent of Democrats wanted theirs to support it. A mid-December poll from CivicScience also showed a wide partisan gap, with 83 percent of Democrats supporting military aid to Ukraine versus 53 percent of Republicans. At the beginning of the war, though, support among Republicans was almost as high as it was among Democrats: In March, another YouGov/CBS News poll showed that 75 percent of Republicans and 80 percent of Democrats supported sending weapons and supplies to Ukraine.”

The following post by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

Links of the Day

Here are two very solid empirically-based assessments of where we are politically as we move into the homestretch of this electoral cycle. Democrats are looking good but there are still considerable grounds for caution….

Can Democrats defy midterm gravity? Making sense of recent shifts in the national political terrain by Michael Baharaeen at substack.com

Roe fell two months ago. Here’s how much it’s hurting the GOP by David Tyler at The Washington Post.

The following post by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his facebook page:

Chart of the Day

Hmmm….